It's long been my opinion that the population of thoughtful, empathetic, reasonable people is much smaller than thoughtful, empathetic, reasonable people think it is.

Thanks for this, Andrew. Since you have addressed the point I raised (in another thread), let me come back and address one of yours.

I agree with you that Amanda was exaggerating when she maintained that she was victimized for being a woman. (Then again, exaggeration is part of her shtick.) But what I see in the comments she received is what strikes me as a particular nastiness directed toward the fact that she is an uppity, potty-mouthed woman. Any man who had blogged as she did would have run into the same resistance from conservatives, no doubt. But I don't believe the vituperation would have reached the levels - or taken the forms - that it did against her.

Which in my view shows an element of substance underlying her overblown rhetoric here.

Dr. Ngo,

If she had made the claim that some of the vituperation she was receiving was because she is a woman, she would have been on solid ground. Although I personally would still have found the whole victim thing offputting; I dislike the trend in modern American society where being a victim has become some kind of privileged status.

Which isn't to say that she's wrong to bring attention to it. We're not going to fix these problems if we don't note them. But I take issue with her means.

She has just spelled out her position a little more coherently in an article in Salon. You may find it of interest, though I doubt your overall judgment will shift much.

(I tried to embed a link, above, but am not sure it worked. If not, it's:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/02/16/marcotte/

Dr. Ngo,

The link worked fine. The Salon piece seems to be just one more example of Ms. Marcotte attempting to establish her status as victim. She seems to see everything through a very narrow prism. I think that she needs to grow up a little and realize that actions have consequences, and you can't spend your life blaming the patriarchy for the bad things that happen to you. Bad things happen to people all the time; sometimes they're deserved, sometimes they're out of proportion to the 'sin,' and sometimes they're wholly unfair. Life is unfair that way. I think Ms. Marcotte endured some things that were way out of proportion to her 'sins,' and I consider the vile threats and emails she received to be particularly egregious. But American politics is like that, unfortunately.

What frosts me more than anything, however, is that the way she has handled this undermines her (or anyone's) ability to make an important point about this whole mess, which is that there are a disturbing number of people who are still misogynistic and who feel no shame whatsoever about expressing those feelings. Yet Ms. Marcotte, while her experience in this case serves as an excellent example, has cried wolf so many times about how bad men are that her credibility to make a point in this forum is pretty much nonexistent.

I'd also like to note that while Donohue got the most ink out of this story, there were many religious Democrats who expressed their displeasure with this hiring as well.

While I don't approve of Brian's language, I do approve of this summation of some of the issues with Ms. Marcotte.

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